Munchausen Syndrome
by Deathly Noted
Summary: Being poisoned has never felt so good. MelloxMatt.


I developed a headache from the enduring scent of smoke in the air long before I ever found him.

Always, he was below the night's deepest shadows, where even black leather stood out as something bright and reflective. Always, he was draped in deadly second hand smoke that made the gauze over my wounds seem humble. Always, he was waiting patiently, yet he never came to me. He never looked at me directly. He never spoke to me if I didn't address him first.

He never loved me, but sometimes he hated me.

That's how we played the Munchausen syndrome game. Our day-to-day lie, we made ourselves sick with it. I had a perpetual headache and he was dying, not from slow growing cancer but today, today, _today_. That's what Matt would always say with his glassy eyes, accusing me, not suicidal sad but resigned to fate. Between us, it just couldn't be any other way but fate, so let's play, let's play this game just one more day.

When I found him, Matt was vomiting, crying, moaning — a guttural something. The important thing was that he wasn't behind his gas mask of silence. There were consonants and vowels in the sound now as I approached the corner he was curled up in; he was muttering to himself, though maybe that hadn't been what he was doing before. We had always been good at putting on shows; we just couldn't get to the point where the curtain closed and we took off our clothes. We had always been _good_, unlike the rest of the world. My rosary served as a reminder of that fact whenever I wanted to take Matt and break him and make love to him-make him love me.

"What are you doing?" I said, but what I meant was, _What are we doing?_

He didn't look at me. He kept his head between his knees, unceasing in his mumbling.

I leaned against the wall to his left, crossed my ankles, and proceeded to stare down at the nape of his neck. Even at this proximity, I couldn't understand his vocalizations, though I could see the flaws in the texture of his hair and skin with perfect definition. In others, I had always found such blemishes fascinating, but I held myself to different standards. Imperfection, I was better than that. I was going to bring down Kira and become a god myself; and I suppose that would make Matt the man whom God loved.

"I'm writing my will," Matt said finally, facing me as if focusing his attention on me, but I felt his misdirected gaze brush coolly past me. There wasn't a trace of tears. Our interactions were always infected with mind games — how could they not be, when we were so brilliant, so goddamn _good_, that we already had one foot inside Heaven — but even for us, the most fucked up people imaginable, this comment was unusually dark. This was a dry husk of the jokes we told just to keep ourselves from going insane, but nor did Matt seem serious; this was morbidity for its own self-indulgent sake.

"What do I get?" I asked, Matt's match in masochism and sadism.

"You get the most important thing of all, of course." A listless shrug interrupted the flatness of his tone. "You get my life."

"That's a contradiction," I pointed out, referring to his words, to his actions, to everything about him. "You can't give your life away in your will. I want something else — something better."

"I don't have anything else." Matt stood up and stretched. As simply as that, he was going to walk away.

I wanted his attention; I wanted him to stay.

"I want your soul."

Matt actually smiled when I said it, sickle-cell anemia on his profile. "What are you, the Devil?"

And I smiled back. "Why would you think that, Matt? Aren't I good to you?"

We smiled at each other as if this could last forever without something cracking — someone.

"Aren't I good to you, Matt?" It was a shadow of myself, a bruised and darkened sound. "Aren't I _good?_"

"Yeah." Matt's tongue swept across his lips, moistening the flesh in a nervous gesture that would have been held back if he hadn't wanted me to see it, if he hadn't wanted me to grab onto his tongue with my teeth the second time around and taste him bleed.

Fisting the mess of hair at the nape of his neck, I could feel the protrusion of a mole, a cancerous growth or a beauty mark or just a scar; and my hands, sculpting his body like clay, surely this was control. I spliced our mouths and our hips together, something deeper, and what Matt gasped was, "I love you."

"I love you," I echoed, but it wasn't the complement to Matt's feelings; it was a breathy, heady question without any end in sight.

He never loved me, but sometimes I…

"God,_ yes_," Matt moaned. That, I had to admit, was perfect.

"You don't love me." My accusation lacked hardness and coldness, adapting to the soft and sultry environment of shared air and bodies entwined.

"Fine. I don't love you," Matt conceded through ragged breaths. "I — ah! — I feel like I'm dying… you make me feel like I'm dying… for something important."

In twitch and convulsion Morse code our bodies begged for more time and then it was over.

* * *

**A/N:** Finis. This story is a bit of an oddball. Mello is going all God complex on/in Matt's ass. It's like MelloxMatt with LightxL overtones. I have writer's block, oh yes, I do. 


End file.
